October 17, 2017
When you’re a manufacturer, substantial downtime means a substantial loss in revenue. So, when you hear that the part you need to get your line back up and running will take two weeks to get, you hit the panic button. That is exactly the situation the plant manager and engineering manager at Continental Tire plant found themselves in. They needed a new Siemens RFID antenna for the green-tire carriage delivery system to get the tire curing press back up and running. At a production rate of 42,000 tires a day, their plant was losing 1,680 tires in output every hour they were down.
Unfortunately, their usual Siemens distributor did not have the Siemens RFID antenna they needed and informed them it would take two weeks to get it in! The plant and engineering managers were in a bind and began looking for a better alternative for sourcing the part. When they first contacted Raven, we were able to shorten the lead time for the part to 4 days. However, we did not stop there. Knowing the operation was completely down, we started making calls to every Siemens contact we thought may be able to help. Finally, we located the Siemens RFID reader Continental needed. Even better, we located two so Continental could have a spare one on hand – one in Atlanta and one in North Carolina. To expedite obtaining the parts, we bought a seat for the parts on the next commercial flight out of Atlanta. Our Siemens contacts came through for us and drove the parts to the airport. We met the flight upon arrival at the airport and drove the Siemens RFID readers straight from the airport to Continental Tire.
Instead of two weeks or even 4 days, we are proud to report we had Continental Tire back up and running 8 hours after production had shut down. Continental Tire is now a regular customer for Raven. The plant and engineering managers know we have their back and will go above and beyond to help keep their operation up and running.
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